I decided to take a completely non-scientific look at what the WordPress curators think is funny/what they think will make the residents of WordPress lol. Basically, who do they think we are? Why does WordPress hate people who are actually funny?

1. Use the Top 10 Format* Nothing says comedy like a list.

Let’s check out this freshly pressed list about going to the dentist.

The idea of completely organized humor is about as edgy as David Letterman. I mean, how non-threatening is the blogger’s avoidance of the Oxford Comma?

answer: about as threatening as going to the dentist

I am not a fan of sweeping generalizations in comedy, or otherwise. I got a few points knocked off a paper I wrote freshman year because I called people who lived in America “Americans.” My TA scribbled “people who live in South America and Canadians are technically Americans, too!” in the margin ( <– I went to Berkeley). My TA had a point: generalizations are rarely accurate, usually offensive and frequently not funny. The things on this list are not true about my dentist — I love my dentist. My dentist could kick your dentist’s ass and maybe he should kick your’s too for making some mean-spirited generalizations about him.

2. Write About a Common Experience In this case, never lolling at a freshly pressed humor post.

Maybe I should take my own advice and stop posting about how ridiculous artichoke cookbooks that look like romance novels are.

Most WordPress users can relate to the subject of this freshly pressed post and nearly all people who avoid the Oxford Comma can. So cool, you have my attention, I hope you have something interesting to say.

I think a lot of good humor stems from the melding of ideas that don’t obviously belong together. If you go for the obvious, please have something original to add to the conversation. Content-wise this freshly pressed post seems super generic to me, at least they attempted to have some sort of writing style.

Let’s talk about the “!!!” at the end of the first sentence. It’d be annoying with one exclamation point, using three exclamation points unironically is just insulting to my intelligence. Give your audience the benefit of the doubt — they can figure out what’s important. Other frequently found offenders: CAPS LOCK, ???, ?!? and (parenthetical snark (I do this sometimes)).

3. Be White and Middle-Aged I can’t relate

I’m not going to comment on this further, but I am going to acknowledge that I am clearly not the target WordPress demographic. There needs to be a blogging platform geared towards apathetic 22 year-olds who aren’t obsessed with Glee (that disqualifies Tumblr).

4. Make Cheesy Jokes I do really well on this one

It hurts me when people try this hard to be funny.

I’m OK with cheesy jokes, but it’s important to use them sparingly. A post full of them is pretty much unreadable. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed at a low quality Steve Jobs joke. Sorry I’m not sorry. Maybe people just shouldn’t answer their phones if they are too busy to talk? Seems like a simpler solution.

5. Be a Parenting Blog Bonus points if you’re a Daddy blog, they love that shizz

WordPress is the least edgy place ever.

No one cares about your kids. At least this freshly pressed blogger is a good writer, but in general mommy blogs make me hate the Internet. I also don’t really understand why mom jeans get so much hype — leggings as pants, camel toe and sweatpants are much more offensive.

Honorable Mentions

Write about first world problems, apparently all humorous situations happen to people from the same socioeconomic background

Have a caption contest with some photo you ripped from The Economist

Use five year-old jokes, like “Ugh Boots,” and pretend they’re original

Be nostalgic of decades past, childhood or at least laugh at all the crazy technology the kids are using these days

Welcome to the Freshly Pressed blacklist. I think it’s a lot more fun here anyway. But then again, I do use caps lock, do these: ??? !?! and do the parentheses thing. I just realized I’m doing absolutely everything wrong.

ashleyjillian, Your comment made me smile. It really would have been wonderful ironic if this post had been freshly pressed. At one time, they pressed almost anything that said anything about wordpress, and heck — you did do a list. Sort of.

Well Mikalee, you just helped me figure out my conundrum: “I too swear far too much to be FP’d,” but it is not gratuitous and I am a humorous storyteller, so all bets are off.

Ashley: I really appreciate this post. Not only is it humorous, but it is very informative. Having read this, I know now to keep writing about esoteric themes, with smart-ass dialogue, and hope-filled taglines because they are interesting and real. My humorous story this week deals with the Devil having a blog on Word Press and getting freshly pressed: “Sneaky Snake’s Blog.” (Technically, it’s about falling in love, miscegenation, free will, one great love, losing love. . . .and the Devil swears.) Damn, there goes my WP recognition :>)

The person in charge of deciding which blog posts made it to “Freshly Pressed”, and I’m not making this up, used to be Joy Victory, the WordPress Editorial Czar. She might still be the one, but I can’t find any recent reference to her on any of the WordPress blogs.

Personally I think the closest anyone has come to accurately describing Freshly Pressed was last year in the Support Forum:

“Judging by the guidelines, writing a post of outstanding blandness and slapping a random unrelated public domain photo on it would seem to be the way to go.”

There are 25 million WP blogs, and only twelve or so spots daily on Freshly Pressed. I don’t think I’ll ever get on, but I figure my best chance is to just keep plugging away with dick jokes. Sooner or later whoever is in charge has to recognize my brilliance.

My dick is so big, for example, it was overthrown by a military coup. It’s now known as the Democratic Republic of My Dick.

I have watched the freshly pressed phenomena, and it seems that a) there is some kind of lottery in place to become freshly pressed. b)it attracts a swarm of readers for basically 6 and a half hours who then see a new header and Swarm somewhere else never to return.. I like your humour.. I love competition.. but where are they running to all these people! c

For whatever it’s worth (coming from an anonymous blogger) , Freshly Pressed has replaced the front page WordPress used for years based on the “Blog Of The Day”, or http://botd.wordpress.com

Because BOTD was based entirely on popularity, the same four or five blogs were featured every day, plus a handful of other blogs that were popular in specific tags, like health. It all became silly.

The current system, which is less annoying, is based on the Global Tags, which means it’s not a popularity contest. So the only way to be considered is to use the obvious Tags, like writing, photography, culture, crafts, sports, news, humor (not humour) and others.

But WP don’t limit their selection to just the past day or two, the ‘photography’ Tag alone has 2000+ pages worth of posts published just in the past few weeks. So you have to use Photography as a Tag to be considered, but that just puts you into a pool of 10,000+ other possible selections.

I loved it when the blog of the day was on the front page. A few years back I was in the top 100 at least a half dozen times. But, now that much bigger corporate blogs like CNN and others are using WordPress, us small-fries are overshadowed. Oh well, that’s okay I write because I like it.

Ash–I’m with you on all of this (even though I’m guilty of some myself). How much damn unfunny stuff can they cram into the humor category? I wrote Top Ten Reasons to Write Top Ten Reasons because it’s so cheesy. My biggest blog? A Beautiful Woman on a Toilet. SOOOO predictable.
Les

I am SO with you on so many of those points. Being a cartoonist who uses a gay couple as his main characters, I sometimes get flack because the strip isnt “gay enough”. Just as with your list, there is apparently another list dedicated to niche social humour, and I guess I didnt get the mailing. LOL

This is fantastic! God, I hope I’m not a typical “mom blogger.” That’s why I started my blog…I couldn’t stomach the vomit-worthy facebook posts from mothers who think their children are the second coming.

I should point out that I am white (OK, Black and White) and middle aged. Other than that I think you are brilliant, AND very funny. Actually you explain why my cartoons never make the list. Oh well. Thanks for liking my post. I liked yours alot!

Oddly enough, I was having a discussion with a friend last night, who told me that my own work is “sometimes too complicated”. I thought about it and realized, Hey, if they cant handle a little depth, they can always go read Family Circle.

After reading this, I’m honored you liked my recent post. Thanks for reading. You have an amazing wit and mind. A few years ago, I was teaching University of Arizona students your age, and I only had a few gems like you.

God, I sound old, and I’m only 32. How did you find my post, by the way? Always curious about how random folks find me…

I was with you until number five. I’m a Mommy Blog…sort of. But my blog is about how they drive me insane, and I them…maybe that’s why I haven’t been Freshly Pressed. As a matter of fact, if anyone wants one of the crumb snatchers, I’ll make you an awesome deal and then I’ll have more time to create great top ten lists! Love the post!

Thought I’d swing by and check out your ‘shizz’. Ha.ha.
Great post. You gave it a lot of thought. I found it very articulate. And then to cut through the shiz…I don’t think too much about freshly pressed and never have. I was told shortly into my blogging that I would be one of those that would never be considered for it. Why? I got a potty-mouth. Ah, who gives a shiz right? I don’t. I write for me. I also fail to meet the standards of what is appropriate and probably fall into some of those irritating categories that you mentioned, but hey…it’s all about fun and being real. Anyway, I found the post to be quite entertaining and am going to have to stop by more often. Here’s to having something in common with our writing…dry humor. From my white, middle-aged ass to your young one. 🙂 –Pissy–

eh, I’m not afraid of bombing. I was told by a british man drinking a screwdriver that I was fearless. That was in the context of a poker tournament at a dive casino, but I like to think it’s true in general.

Yep I’m a momblogger, or so “they” tell me. I just started blogging one day and didn’t realize I’d have a niche. Anyway one day, randomly, I saw that I was on Freshly Pressed. I actually thought someone stole my moth photo and then realized that MOI had been selected to represent the humor category. Randomly. My post wasn’t even that great. I totally have hysterical posts, but they chose one that started with Ewww! So there ya have it. I’m also white and somewhat middle aged if you’re keeping tabs. 🙂

Hey Ashley . . .I’m glad you put my mind to rest .Now that we know that we’re the funny ones . . .thank the Goddess! I was really starting to wonder . . .when ever I read FP’d I was kinda confused yet still a little dissappointed, just wanting all those readers . . .thanks for reading my blog and liking

Can’t say that humor is my strong point but I am working on it. We have an election here in New Zealand on the 26th November and I aim to be the MP (member of parliament) for Invercargill. Great to see the grass roots ‘occupy’ protests happening in the US. Our young people here need to wake up to what’s to their futures and get their voice heard.

Your TA had it all wrong. Though technically we are all North Americans, as a Canadian, we only call the US folks Americans. They were the ones who thought they had bought Prince Edward Island and who wanted to know about that snow that mysteriously should appear as soon as you cross the Canadian border! We would never call fellow Canadians Americans! 🙂

i thought my English style sense of humour (and spelling) was inevitably going to be lost on wordpress, I probably think right. This however, I find funny, and we seem to share irks, which is always pleasant, if an irk can be pleasant.

I’ll never get there. No traffic, occasional lapses into pirate speak (and not the “Arrrg” kind), less than stellar Mommying and an absurd fondness for the snarky parenthetical. Parenthesis vie with semi-colons for my favorite punctuation. It’s terminal. But, hey, I’ve got a list of ten lists of ten things going, so maybe one day I’ll bust through. To the moon, baby. Or maybe to stats consistently in the double digits.

Thanks for the “Like” and for noting the general socioeconomic blogger status. If it were 200 years ago, we’d all be Jane Austen characters sitting around a drawing room needlepointing samplers. Instead, we’re blogging. In the year 2200, will our posts sell at auction for thousands of dollars?

Ms. Jillian: got another e-mail saying you liked my recently posted stories. Thanks for the positive feedback. BTW, I never even think about making the “Freshly Pressed” list because I use too many scatological references and F-words. And just TOO MANY WORDS in general. I KNOW the WordPress Judges don’t like that. I don’t care…but I did like your take on the subject esp. re: the stale Top Ten Format and the MommyBlogs. I’m in your camp: anarchy is always funnier.

Hey! I stopped by to see your site because you liked my post today. The first thing I read is this post, in which I find that I’m totally breaking the rules. But you liked it anyway, and mine wasn’t a numbered list, so i guess it’s alright.

Great post, by the way. There are quite a few FP posts that leave me scratching my head.

Oh HELLO…. thanks for sharing almost all of the exact same sentiments as me. I would gladly read a post about artichoke cook books with a romantic twist, FYI. And clearly if you scrolled down further into my blog, you’d see that I avenged us in the Mommy Blog department. Cheers to you!

Write about first world problems, apparently all humorous situations happen to people from the same socioeconomic background… It hurts me when people try this hard to be funny.. Nothing says comedy like a list…

Thought-provoking… I have never read a blog from the Freshly Pressed list! I typically follow the tags. Now I’m going to have to check out the Freshly Pressed list so that I can see if they are all from the same mold.

I am guilty of the dot-dot-dot… <—see? Annoying, I know. If I could get Freshly Pressed for that, I would have been twenty times already!

nope, I’ve never been FP! I guess I am just organically awesome. That being said, I would totally be down to be Freshly Pressed because I want to take over the Interwebz one reader at a time. I love tiramisu.

How do I “Press This”, that, or the other thing, while trying to figure out what stereotype I fit into? Am I required to have an iron? I can’t remember how to play “tag”. I’m too old. Is an “Oxford comma” some type of shoe style? I live on the tippy top of a mountain, Does that make me a hillbilly or perhaps out of touch? Or just high? Is all humor subjective or is it suggestive? I have no idea where I am or why I’m here. I think I had better stumble back to my own blog where I feel more comfortable and safe. There are too many people here and that makes me paranoid. Does that make me a reclusive type or social phobic? Anyway, I found this to be informative and mind expanding and humorous. Thank you for being here.

Oh my god, woman! Reading your blog and ALL the comments was like striking gold! I don’t usually use the humor tag and did it on a whim yesterday. Now I’m glad I did.
I really appreciated the past and future tenses of LOL. Quite frankly, it seems so overused that I tend to avoid using it; like walking around a pile of dog crap on the sidewalk.
And I have had some dark thoughts and musings about what it takes to get freshly pressed; then decided, what the hell. I’m having fun with this and I’m going to keep doing it anyway.

I do most of the cheesy things you mention and won’t apologize, cause I plan to continue. Unless and until I find some other cheesy thing I like better. The only thing I like better than cheese, is corn! Write some scatological humor and you might end up thinking I’m six; only true when I hear fart jokes, otherwise, 90! JK!

Thank you for visiting and liking my post. I have certainly enjoyed reading yours. I’ll be back! *said in best Arnold Schwartzeneggar imitation*

Wow. I feel lucky you liked my post! Thanks!! I am glad I didn’t read this first, I would have froze and not written anything. Humor is hard to write, I think it either happens or doesn’t, you can’t force it.

I like that you like the list on my mommy (plus other stuff) blog. And color me jealous of all of your comments! You make me want to proofread and put more thought/time into my posts.
–Jell Jell @ I’ll Sleep When They’re Grown

similarly, (and avoiding the list structure that you mention in step 1) here’s my Guide to Ignoring Guidelines for bloggers and people that prefer not to call themselves bloggers because the word looks ridiculous (I fit in this group)

And here I was afraid it was just because I sucked at writing. I am so relieved to find out the humor-mafia had it in for me. Humor is so subjective, or at least that’s what I tell myself to assuage my feelings of inadequacy. SIGH!!!!! (I think I just screwed tintimidated. In contrast I managed to snag a C once on a book report in 3rd grade but I try not to let that go to my head.

Very interesting perspective. I too wrote like I think which is why it makes little

And here I thought it was because I sucked at writing! I’m so relieved to find that the
humor-czars had it in for me.

Humor is so subjective…at least that’s what I tell myself to assuage my feelings of
incompetence. I confess I read your bio and was immediately intimidated. In contrast I managed to snag a C once on a book report in 3rd grade but I try not to let that go to my hhead. Later, I was crushed to learn that mom had threatened to make a pie for the PTA bake sale if I didn’t get that grade…but that’s another story. Apparently mom cooks like I write.

Very entertaining post with some great points. I paid close attentions to some of those GLARING mistakes!!!! (I guess old habits die hard…ooops! cliche!). But hey, it’s not like you can make me stay after school for that. You have an interesting perspective on the subject. Thanks for ‘liking’ my post earlier. I was extremely flattered.

I am old, white, married, have a little dog, and live in a trailer, yet you have “liked” a couple of my posts. Who needs “Freshly Pressed”? I am a happy blogger knowing that you liked my humor. Since I suffer from SFS (Sally Field Syndrome) every little “like” helps. If I ever got as much attention for a blog as you have garnered with this one, I’d be walking on air instead of gasping for it inside this giant iron lung which I call home.

Here’s what I’ve learned about being Freshly Pressed. Sometimes the author is just as puzzled by the choice of post as the rest of the world. And sadly, in my case, they chose a post with every single criteria you listed. I was not sure whether to laugh or cry. Oh, well.

My posts generally meet the criteria, however I think they are too funny to ever get featured. I don’t mean to sound smug or anything, but I work hard to write a lot of smart, witty humor and it just seems to me that they try to promote posts that have cheesy humor and are not very thought provoking.